Our recommended charities
The goal of our charity research is to find the most cost-effective ways to improve people’s lives, and to share our recommendations with donors. Our distinctive approach is to take happiness seriously: we compare charities by how good they are at improving people’s subjective wellbeing – how people feel during, and think about, their lives.
Specifically, we evaluate charities on a single metric called wellbeing-adjusted life years (WELLBYs)1. The metric is simple: one WELLBY is equivalent to a 1-point increase on a 0-10 wellbeing scale for one year. WELLBYs allow us to impartially compare the impact of different charities, even if they address different problems
Top Charities
Promising Charities
Honourable Mentions
Happier Lives Fund
Top Charities
These charities are amongst the most cost-effective at improving wellbeing, thoroughly investigated, and backed by strong evidence.
Our research finds these top charities are over 100x more impactful at improving wellbeing than the typical charity. Your support doesn’t just help — it helps more. More people. More lives. By gifting top charities you’re treating more people for depression, enabling multiple years of better life.
StrongMinds treats people for depression by delivering group psychotherapy for free. It works primarily in Uganda and Zambia, where mental health services are severely underfunded.
Cause area and intervention
Mental health – psychotherapy
Cost-effectiveness
40 WELLBYs per $1,000 donated (or $25 per WELLBY)
Evidence
- Our own systematic review and meta-analysis of 84 studies on psychotherapy
- Randomised control study of StrongMinds’ programme
- The monitoring and evaluation data from StrongMinds
Depth of analysis
High. We spent over 1,000 hours completing 95%+ of the research we think is relevant.
Friendship Bench Zimbabwe provides sustainable community-based psychological interventions. It does this primarily in Zimbabwe, where there are very few mental health services.
Cause area and intervention
Mental health – psychotherapy
Cost-effectiveness
49 WELLBYs per $1,000 donated (or $21 per WELLBY)
Evidence
- Our own systematic review and meta-analysis of 84
- Studies on psychotherapy
- 4 randomised control studies of Friendship Bench’s programme
- The monitoring and evaluation data from Friendship Bench
Depth of analysis
High. We spent over 1,000 hours completing 95%+ of the research we think is relevant
Promising Charities
These charities are likely extremely cost-effective based on research so far, however we need stronger evidence for them to qualify as a ‘Top Recommended Charity’. They’re higher risk, higher reward, in terms of cost-effectiveness compared to top charities.
Pure Earth works to eliminate lead poisoning, which can have a major impact on people’s cognitive abilities and wellbeing in later life. Lead poisoning kills as many people as malaria and HIV/AIDS combined.
Our analysis is based on reducing lead in cosmetics in Ghana.
Cause area and intervention
Pollution – reducing lead exposure in cosmetics through advocacy and technical assistance
Cost-effectiveness
108 WELLBYs per $1,000 donated (or $9.23 per WELLBY)
Evidence
- 2 correlational studies linking childhood lead exposure to adult wellbeing
- Estimations of lead exposure levels, based on Pure Earth’s modelling
- Prediction of how much Pure Earth will reduce lead exposure, based on its track record
Depth of analysis
We spent about 200 hours completing 60% of the research we think is relevant.
Taimaka treats malnutrition in children in Nigeria, which prevents severe and lasting physical and mental health issues.
Cause area and intervention
Nutrition – reducing extreme malnutrition through therapeutic food
Cost-effectiveness
66 WELLBYs per $1,000 (or $15 to per WELLBY)
Evidence
- A meta-analysis of 13 studies, which used a similar nutritional supplement
- 1 randomised control trial, based on using a similar nutritional supplement
- 2 natural studies on the impact of famine
Depth of analysis
We spent around 270 hours completing 30%–60% of the research we think is relevant.
Honourable mentions
Honourable mentions are special cases that we think are likely cost-effective, but we don’t have sufficient material to make a recommendation like our promising or top recommendation. These are for donors who care particularly about these topics or do not mind even riskier bets.
ACTRA
ACTRA provides group therapy to young men with violent or criminal backgrounds in order to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour in Latin America.
Our evaluation of its cost-effectiveness is a very shallow prediction based on existing modelling but updated with ACTRA-relevant information. We estimate a predictive cost-effectiveness of 37 WELLBYs per $1,000 donated (or $27 per WELLBY). See our report.
The Shamiri Institute
The Shamiri Institute is an NGO that primarily focuses on scaling mental health interventions across secondary schools in Kenya and secondarily contributes to advancing research on improving youth mental health in Africa. We focus on estimating the effectiveness of its current primary programme, the Shamiri intervention.
Our evaluation estimates a cost-effectiveness of 32.93 to 36.80 WELLBYs per $1,000 donated. Read our report.
Parenting Charities
We find that charities that improve parenting practices could be very cost-effective (50 WELLBYs per $1,000 donated). However, we have yet to find a funding opportunity.
In the report, we mention Reach Up’s ICDDR,B programme, but there is currently no available option to directly fund this programme.
Donors interested in this topic might want to donate to these kinds of charities. We are currently looking for a parenting charity to evaluate.
Happier Lives Fund
The Happier Lives Fund is an option for donors to give easily and spread their donation across different areas. 90% of your donation will be allocated among our Top and Promising Charities by our experts, while 10% will fund the Happier Lives Institute’s research and operations. Donations will be disbursed on a quarterly basis and reported on our website.
Happier Lives Institute is the only organisation applying the science of wellbeing (Happiness Science) to create the most impact on global happiness – your kind donations will fund more research, enabling bigger impact for those most in need.
The Happier Lives Institute finds and promotes the best charities for improving global happiness. It does this by conducting scientifically rigorous research into different cause areas, interventions, and charities.
Make the world happier
These are the most cost-effective charities we’ve found for making the world a happier place.
Backed by research
All our charity recommendations are based on extensive evidence-based research.
Multiply your impact
Our top charities are 150x more cost-effective than the typical charity.
Free to use
100% of your donation goes to the charity you choose. You can access all our research for free.
Transparent
We’re open about how we come to our conclusions, our uncertainties, mistakes we’ve made, and areas where we need to improve.
Fair and unbiased
We don’t take any money from the charities we recommend. We’re independent and neutral.
In our search for the best charities, inevitably some charities haven’t yet met our criteria for us to recommend them outright. We found these charities either aren’t highly cost-effective, or don’t have a current funding gap. However, they are likely still much more impactful than most other average charities.
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